Vaccination Surveillance System takes out iAward

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Not-for-profit organisation The Improvement Foundation and technology partner OBS have won the South Australian iAward in the Health category, with a solution developed for the Western Australian Department of Health.

The award was for the design and development of the ‘Vaccination Surveillance System’, a vaccine surveillance system allowing WA Health to monitor adverse vaccine reactions “faster than ever before.”

Following incidents of adverse reactions to a flu vaccine, the Western Australian Department of Health and the Improvement Foundation worked with OBS to design and deliver the new system.

The Vaccination Surveillance System helps identify and report adverse immunisation reactions, enabling proactive identification of contaminated or otherwise compromised vaccines, making reporting adverse reactions simpler and allows authorities to identify and remove at-risk vaccines from the health system more quickly.

According to the solution’s developers shortly after its launch WA Health saw a dramatic increase in the number of patients willing to opt-in to the system.

“Reporting on immunisation reactions has previously been a manual process, requiring vast amounts of people power to proactively telephone and follow up a sample of patients. The automation delivered by this solution lets every single patient be followed up, making it more likely that adverse reactions will be reported,” said Colin Frick, Improvement Foundation’s CEO.

Hosted on the secure Improvement Foundation Web Portal qiConnect, using Microsoft Web Platform tools, a simple-to-use and mobile-friendly application was constructed from concept to go-live over a six week period. The application integrates with GP billing software to securely link patients and their guardians with health practitioners via two-way interactive SMS messaging.

The project will now be considered for the national iAwards. Other winners of South Australian iAwards include South Australian Police, which won the Premier’s Award, and Flinders University, which won the Community Award for its project ‘OrbIT the Accessible Computer Gaming System For Children with Physical Disabilities.’